After four years as the director of the School of Journalism, Glenn Frankel will retire from his position and become a full-time author.

In an email to his colleagues Thursday evening, Frankel announced he will be leaving UT after the 2013-14 academic school year. In his last year, Frankel said he will focus on transforming the curriculum in the journalism master program and focus on helping a new person transition into his position.

Frankel said he will return home to Arlington, Va. and write books full-time, which he says is "a cherished dream."

"This is a time where journalism needs that kind of support, and all of our former assumptions are up for grabs. We need to reassert and reestablish the critical importance of journalism in a democratic society," Frankel said in an interview with The Daily Texan. "And that's part of the job for the School of Journalism."

In the 2012 fall semester, the journalism school released a new curriculum aimed to better train students to become multimedia journalists and have multiple skills. It was the first time the undergraduate curriculum had been critically changed in two decades, Frankel said.

"Our students are getting digital tools from the day they come to the school while still getting basic journalistic sensibility that goes with it," Frankel said. "There are still bugs to iron out and things to get done, but its an enormous achievement."

The new curriculum requires students to conduct a professional internship, which Frankel says has strengthened relations between the School of Journalism and professional news organizations such as the Dallas Morning News. The Morning News recently ran six stories about race in school classrooms by UT students writing for Reporting Texas, a journalism class at the University.

Despite these gains, Frankel said the school needs to form even better and stronger relationships with these news organizations.

"There is an enormous opportunity here to be a spokesman and a champion of good journalism and the value of good journalism," Frankel said.